'India opportunity for SoC is huge'

Headquartered in Santa Clara, Tensilica-the con-figurable processor com-pany,
chose India to set up its first R&D center outside of USA. It has also
chosen to partner with another Santa Clara based com-pany, eInfochips-to focus
on extending the IP solutions around its Xtensa platform. Tensilica senior VP of
engineering, Beatrice Fu, who was in India to oversee the com-pany operations,
spoke to Nanda Kasabe of Cyber-Media News about the company's plans.

How do you see the global chip design market evolving?

The global chip design market alone is estimated at $20-25 bn. In India, I
believe, the market should touch the $200 mn mark by 2005. Tradi-tionally,
designers have deve-loped chips by taking a stan-dard off-the-shelf processor
core, and surrounding that core with custom-designed blocks on a single chip in
order to hit their performance goals and bring differentiated fea-tures to the
market. Therefore, at least 90 percent of the chip must be designed and verified
to work with time-consuming low-level logic methods.

Tensilica has developed an alternative design approach that allows
configurable proce-ssors to be used in place of custom-designed blocks. The
company's approach allows designers to quickly and auto-matically tune the
processor for the target applications. Ultimately, electronics consu-mers will
benefit from this technology by having access to a plethora of affordable,
feature-rich audio, video, broadband, storage and imag-ing products that meet
the unique needs of the digital lifestyle.

What is unique about your product Xtensa?

The Xtensa Platform makes it easy for companies to gene-rate their desired
processors in a matter of hours. For example, if Nokia wishes to work on a next
generation phone, it could use Xtensa platform to customize processors.
Compa-nies incorporate only the features they need, squeezing years from design
time and making the resulting chips ten to 100 times faster, smaller or less
power-hungry than standard chips.

Why did Tensilica choose to enter the Indian market through eInfochips?

Risk is a big factor. We did evaluate the possibilities of coming to India
on our own. However, eInfochips has capabilities and already has built a
presence in India. There is a growing wealth of engi-neers in India who
understand embedded tools and system-on-chip (SOC) design. We see big
opportunities in this mar-ket for our high performance configurable processors
in roles once dominated by hard-wired logic designs. eInfochips works in ASIC
design services, embedded system solutions and IP cores. It will develop new
embedded tools and testing suites for the Tensilica processor.

Do you have plans to address the Indian market through this center?

We do not have any direct customers in India, although a number of our
customers have a base here. This center will help to address these compa-nies
and provide the necessary support.